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About the artist

Robert A Little

d. 2005

When the young Boston-born architect (a direct descendant of Paul Revere) arrived in Cleveland in 1947, he found a community whose taste in buildings, including private homes, still reflected the turn-of-the-century Beaux Arts school of design that originated in Paris. When he began teaching courses at Western Reserve University’s school of architecture, he discovered that even the next generation was being inculcated with these noble, but backward-looking principles. Having studied with Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius, the founder of the influential Bauhaus school of design, at Harvard University, Little (Class of 1937; M.A., 1939) saw architecture in a different light. It should meet the needs and reflect the spirit, he believed, of contemporary living. As one of the first architects in Cleveland to apply the principles of the Bauhaus and the new International Style, Little quickly became the hero of the young architecture students in town.

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